Experience of a lifetime

It’s been amazing from start to finish and neither of can quite believe it’s over.

It’s been really hard to remember everything that we’ve done and so it’s great that we have this blog to remind us. We wrote this primarily for ourselves so that we can look back and see what an incredible ride we’ve had over the past year, but we’ve been really lucky that so many of our friends and family have kept up with our travels too using it.

We fell extremely fortunate and grateful to have had the opportunity to take a year out and travel. We are fully aware that not many people can do what we’ve done and that some people don’t understand why we’ve spent all of this money on, what’s effectively been, one amazingly long holiday. However, as anyone who knows us well will know travelling has been a huge and important part of our lives for a long time, and to us, experiences are so much more important than things. When you travel you see so much and meet so many people, that your mind is opened to just how amazing this world actually is. Believe it or not, our bucket list is actually longer now than it was when we started! We would encourage anyone to travel- we’ve met all sorts of people who are also following their dreams by seeing the world- young families (with 2 little kids in tow- kudos,) retired couples, friends, siblings.

We’re excited and ready to go back to London now- it’s been 5 years and we’re looking forward to buying our house, getting our new little pugs (Bazza and Paul) and having some sort of routine again. It will be hard at first to get used to it all again and the urge to travel will inevitably kick in again soon but we will persist!

So, here’s just a few of the amazing memories we will take from the past 12 months:

Sunset over the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

The many faces of Angkor, Cambodia

2 days of Zip lining through the jungle, Laos

The mighty Vanatar, New Zealand

Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Kepler Trail, New Zealand

Wine tasting and cheesing, New Zealand

13,000 ft of skydiving, New Zealand

Finding this one again, New Zealand

Christmas Day kayaking, Fiji

Diving with a school of Hammerheads, Fiji

Climbing the most active volcano in South America, Chile

Patagonia, Chile

Hiking the Inca Trail, Peru

Cycling 18km into the Atacama desert to find the salt water pools, Chile

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

The Amazon Rainforest, Bolivia

Unexpected treasures, Spain

Dixon-Atkinson reunion, USA

There’s so many, many more.

So that’s all from us, we’re off back to London and onto a new chapter but these memories will stay with us always. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading.